A history of classical Greek literature / by the Rev. J.P. Mahaffy.

  • John Pentland Mahaffy
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of classical Greek literature / by the Rev. J.P. Mahaffy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/328 page 35
    § 29 It seems that the Alexandrian critics, when they came 0 sift all these materials, and were unable to reach back even 0 far as Peisistratus, laid most stress on the old editions, of j Seven Clty e£btions were then extant,1 and seven /car’ V pa’ °r tensions by individual scholars, which had been repare from the recension of Onomacritus. It would be lost interesting to know at what exact time during the present rj o«:;fcrs t ta,kcn- seein«tta ** ent out of fashion when lyric and dramatic poetry was de- e oped and seeing that these copies were thought older and tereitb I 0' °,fuhe earheSt CritiCS’ they Cannot have bcen »d P«iU, i§ i3°' u V We Speak °f the Alexandrian critics we almost .elude the dilettanti, such as Philetas, Aratus, Apollonius •ouX th0 6 °U,rSelves strictly t0 the grammarians, who & t the accumulated treasures of the great library to bear nVM y °f ‘he tCf °f H0men lt indeed ^d at all philology among the Greeks, all textual and grammatical meism arose from the desire to purify and to understand he xt of Homer, and then of other old poets. The glories of the great school of Alexandria cluster about f na™.es the successive leaders of the school, the two latter ch rivalling and opposing his master. Zenodotus 2 was the first 10 rejected as spurious all but the Iliad and Odyssey, and ‘An edition in those days meant a single official copy, preserved bv ton y, from which private copies were made. The civic editions w * sffia'nT11 The fo T; ChiaT’ CyPrian’ ArgiVC’ Cretan> “nd^olic ). rhe four first were Ionic, the rest v^Eolic Thp Ayr t • • TtOT'/ ,,wen,j-nine ,h' chian 'e ihe Ionifa ^ > h>™ **» special], intended [o p “ onic dialect of the poems among an gEolic population Tlr» tations from these do not give us a very hiah idea of thr>P ■ ,The f '“Hions mnfh better, '“ft”' Aristarchus seems never U 2
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